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Rapha Rides Boulder

This summer, Rapha is visiting 20 cities around the world to celebrate the communities that make this beautiful sport so different. Boulder is the first stop on our tour of the best roads and riding culture, with a packed weekend of rides and events on May 19-21st. In preparation for Rapha Rides Boulder, Bicycling takes a closer look at what makes the city one of the top riding destinations in the US.

Meet You at the Bus Stop

The story of Boulder’s fastest ride

Just about every cycling community has a 'Wednesday Worlds'. Boulder's happens twice a week, and it's one of the few places where the ride stands a chance of living up to its name. Here is the story of Boulder's Bus stop ride, possibly the fastest post-work ride in the world.

Imagine rolling up for a training ride, and several guys who lined up at the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia were chilling in the parking lot in team kit, casually noshing on bars, joking with some pros you sort-of recognize in national team jerseys nonchalantly sipping from bottles. It’s going to be a painful thrill.

This is the scene at the Bustop, a seedy strip club five miles north of downtown Boulder. The ride starts at 5 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday, as long as Daylight Savings is in effect. The route has changed over the years, as increasing sprawl has put more cars on the road, and most recently because a road was flooded, but the idea has always been the same: gather Boulder’s talent, put it in the big ring, treat the ride like a race, and finish spent.

Davis Phinney—a Boulder native, Olympian, Tour de France stage winner, and part of the reason the Bustop ride earned such a fearsome reputation—was there at the ride’s inception. It was 1978, and top riders were in town for the Red Zinger Classic stage race. The Red Zinger, named for a flavor of Celestial Seasonings tea, was the premier stage race in the United States when US cycling was growing for the first time since the Great Depression. Phinney, an up-and-comer, recently out of the junior ranks, heard, ‘Hey, let’s meet up out by the Bustop and have a throw down out to Lyons tonight.’ There was a parking lot for waiting—everyone rode up from town—and a stop sign where Broadway T’s into Foothills Highway. Leaving town, ride heads north into the high prairie on that two lane shouldered road, with the Front Range both on the left and on the horizon. Eventually, the ride heads south, finishing where they began. (Experience the best of Boulder’s road riding on the two-day 145-mile Rapha Transfer Ride. Sign up here. )

Red Zinger became the Coors Classic. The race showcased not only the best American talent, but also drew in top amateur teams from around the world. As the eighties moved on, American talent got deeper, an American pro peloton started to grow, the Classic became a pro race. In 1986, the World Road Championships, were hosted in Colorado Springs, and the Classic became a tune-up race for the Worlds. Boulder, the race’s home, beckoned the cream of American racing, which found it an ideal place to train, and moved in, many for good. The Bustop ride became even better training around the race, as world-class cyclists from around the world would be in town first to acclimate to the altitude, then to recuperate.

As the ride grew, Phinney, eventually the winningest American male bike racer, made sure to bring teammates, first from 7-Eleven, then Coors Light, to treat the ride as a team time trial, as a good workout, and to keep the ride safe. Sprinting at the end, posting up in victory was something Phinney didn’t do, as the point was the workout, and as fellow pros were always at the front at the end, no one else did it, either.

Chris Wherry grew up in Boulder when Phinney and his generation were the ride hammers. Wherry first showed up in 1989 when he was fifteen. He put peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches in his pocket in case he got dropped, and he always did. But he’d wait for the regroup and get dropped again. Eventually, he got to be one of the guys handing out the pain, with a USPRO national champion jersey among his palmares. There were sprint lines in his days, and they felt well-earned.

The ride wasn’t only about getting stronger, it was inspiration and aspiration. “It was a dream to do the Bustop ride and go pull for pull with my heroes—and get to know them as people—on the easy roll back to town,” recalls Phinney. “We’d split off at the various intersections and I’d get back to my little apartment and dare to dream big... I reflect back fondly on those times—some of the best times in my career.”

Rapha Rides Boulder features three days of riding and special events, including the Transfer Ride, a two-day excursion across some of the finest mountain roads in Colorado. Ride with us.

Boulder’s Fast Foodies

The culinary talents supporting Rapha Rides Boulder

To fuel our Flatiron riding, Rapha has partnered with some of the city’s finest culinary talents. Read on to meet the quartet working to keep Rapha Rides Boulder fed and watered.

Boulder’s worst kept secret is that the city’s food scene is just as eye-opening, delicious, diverse and accessible as the riding - and there’s a local habit of cyclists becoming chefs, and of chefs becoming cyclists. The four foodies in charge of the kitchen at Rapha Rides Boulder seem to be taken from the middle of the city’s chef/cyclist Venn diagram. There’s Sal Proia, avid rider and head chef at PMG on West Pearl, known for his hand-rolled tortellini and milling his own flour. He’s joined by Michael Friedberg, the former ski racer turned cyclocrosser, who bounces between his three Yellowbelly Chicken joints, cycling through all the hats available to him: founder, dishwasher, delivery driver, fried chicken evangelist. Then there’s Lachlan MacKinnon Patterson, founding chef of Pizzeria Locale, where the pies are fired Neapolitan style - 900F for two minutes - and whose wine labels, Scarpetta and Squadra, will be stocking Rapha Rides’ bars. And finally, former Euro-pro Will Frischkorn rounds out the group, supplying delicacies from his deli, Cured. (The four chefs will be cooking at the Rapha Rides Boulder opening and closing parties.)

The overlap between riding and dining is unavoidable, and not just because cyclists are prone to ravenous hunger. Frishkorn found his interest in food after retiring from the Garmin-Slipstream racing team, when he and his wife began making their way around the market towns of Catalonia by bike. At each stop, the Frishkorns encountered cheeses and cured meats that they wanted to bring back to Colorado - so they did. “We loved the idea of having a small shop like that which you see all over the world, back home in Boulder.”

Michael Freidberg followed a similar trajectory - his riding habits pushed him towards a fresh, flavorful, healthy (yet satisfying) style of food. “We put a healthy spin on something that’s super traditional and made it accessible because eating well, having fun, and using both as tools for recovery, innovation and connection - that’s just what Boulderites do.” In the same spirit, Sal Proia’s menus are made, in part, on a ride. “If my body is doing the work, my mind can spin a bit. Ideas come pouring in and stoke my hunger. I’m always planning what I’ll cook and serve next when I’m riding.”

The menu for the Rapha Rides Boulder weekend is still in development, but the four foodies took the chance to run through their collective greatest hits: rye crispbreads with roasted beet and walnut chermoula; crispy, fast-fired pizzas with smoked mozzarella and charred basil; chorizo-stuffed dates with romesco sauce; pea shoots with lemon zest and homemade ricotta; the perfect butterscotch budino. “The food scene in Boulder is the best it’s ever been,” says MacKinnon-Patterson, “and it’s only going to keep getting better.” Which seems to be the perfect invitation to get out and stoke the appetite in the saddle.

Common Ground

Calling all design enthusiasts: Rapha and Herman Miller are teaming up for a series of rides that explore architecture and design.

Rapha and Herman Miller are teaming up to host bike-based explorations of architecture and design in each Rapha Rides city, led by local creatives and design obsessives. Reserve your spot for this free tour now.

Each design ride will explore unique aspects of its host city. For the first ride in Boulder, on May 20th, expect a combination of dirt-road climbs, views of the Flatirons, and a set of unique industrial sights—including several noteworthy modern homes. The blend of scenery and city continues in San Francisco, where Rob Forbes, founder of Design Within Reach and PUBLIC bicycles, will lead a ride by landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, with stops for local bites in Hayes Valley. Highlights from later in the season include an exploration of Manhattan’s overlooked gems, like a subterranean plaza by modern master Isamu Noguchi tucked away in the bustling Financial District.

Alex Valdman, Rapha’s head of design, admits the idea for the collaboration was born out of a bit of self-indulgence – he’s a self-professed devotee of midcentury modern design and architecture, including Herman Miller’s roster of heavy-hitters like George Nelson and Charles and Ray Eames, design legends whose pioneering methods to form and innovation revolutionized furnishings for the home and office. In fact, the initial idea for a Herman Miller and Rapha collaboration came when the Rapha design team visited an exhibition of fabrics created by Alexander Girrad for Herman Miller.

Cycling has also become something of a tradition for Herman Miller. The company has supported employee-driven riding clubs and teams for decades, including several charitable events in its home state of Michigan. “Our connection to Rapha started out of respect for one another, as brands committed to great design each in their own space and to high performance and value for their communities,” says Ben Watson, the chief creative officer at Herman Miller (and avid Rapha Cycling Club member). “We hope folks will have a great time, meet like-minded people interested in biking and design, and hopefully come away with a new experience of their own city.”

“Riding through a city amplifies your senses and makes you so aware,” adds Valdman. “The smells and the textures of the road, having that come through the tires to the wheels to the frame, into the seat post, saddle, and on to you—you get a visceral sense of history, and a sense of your place within that history.”

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